Good morning. My name is Alexandra Hiles. I'm the immigration program manager in Nairobi, and I'm also the area director responsible for sub-Saharan African, so I'm responsible for offices in Dakar, Dar es Salaam, Lagos, Nairobi, and Pretoria.
The territory covered by the offices in the region includes applications from the residents of almost 50 countries. It's a complex environment to operate in as a result of the size of the territory, the limited infrastructure, the security and health concerns for officers, and the diversity of the caseload in countries covered.
We face multiple challenges based on geography, infrastructure, and security, which I will briefly mention. We constantly seek to find mechanisms to overcome these obstacles, either by shifting files between offices, seeking solutions through technology, or by liaising with organizations such as the United Nations refugees agency and the International Organization for Migration to help us resolve the logistical challenges.
A significant issue in our region is the reliability of documentation required as evidence of relationship or identity. Such documentation is often of very poor quality and difficult to obtain, given the long history of conflict and unrest. Civil documents are not always reliable, and verification with issuing authorities can be lengthy or inconclusive. To ensure program integrity, officers are often required to request secondary documentation or to use other program integrity tools such as in-person interviews or DNA.
As I believe all of my colleagues have mentioned, we also see issues with the genuineness of relationships, given the incentive for many people of a better life in Canada. In spousal sponsorship applications, officers have encountered cases where the sponsors themselves gained permanent residence through sponsorship by another spouse, which may, according to the circumstances, raise questions about the bona fides of either the previous or the current relationship. We also process cases where sponsorship eligibility is not met due to non-declaration of family members during the sponsor's landing process to Canada.
For example, we do see cases where the sponsor, subsequent to landing, applies to sponsor his or her spouse with a marriage date that is prior to the date of the sponsor's landing. The omission may have enabled the sponsor to be found eligible and landed in Canada as a dependant, but the failure to declare the relationship triggers the application of R 117(9)(d), which was previously raised by Ms. Snow.
In many of these cases, officers are asked to consider allowing the applicant an exemption to R 117(9)(d), which requires a comprehensive assessment of the humanitarian and compassionate factors presented by the applicant, including the best interests of any affected children, with all factors being considered within the cultural context of the applicants and their families.
Adoption cases can also be very complex, as many of them are inter-family. In many instances, officers need to establish both the ties to the adoptive parent as well as the severance of ties between the child and the biological parents. Officers are also required to assess these relationships in the context of accompanying children in all family reunification cases, as the principal applicant often wishes to bring adopted children, often nieces or nephews, to Canada. When processing adoption applications, officers also need to ensure that they are meeting Canada's commitment to apply the standards and safeguards of the Hague Convention on inter-country adoption, which means ensuring that each inter-country adoption has been made in the best interests of the child and with respect for his or her fundamental rights. Officers are committed to preventing the abduction of, sale of, or traffic in children, and all adoption applications are processed with extreme care.
In some processing missions such as Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, and Pretoria, many of our family class applicants are also refugees in their country of refuge. This creates additional layers of logistical challenges in communication with and access to applicants, as well as challenges for the applicants even after we've issued their visas, such as the obtaining exit permits or logistics of eventual travel to Canada. On the issue of exit permits, we work closely with UNHCR and IOM, that are sometimes able to assist us successfully in advocating with the local government on behalf of our applicants.
Applicants often do not have timely or reliable access to phone services, Internet, or email. Additionally, when requesting additional documents or other information, communication is often via the sponsor, which adds to our processing times. Many applicants cannot communicate in either English or French but only in their local dialect or native language. As our territories are vast and local language requirements numerous, we do not always have the language skills amongst our staff to communicate with the applicant. To respond to these challenges, we are using contracted interpreters to assist in communicating with applicants for quick information gathering. We are as flexible as we can be in ensuring our applicants have adequate and meaningful time to respond to our requests for necessary documents, as we are very aware of the logistical and bureaucratic challenges facing them in their countries of origin or refuge.
In cases where an interview is required, applicants are often not able to travel to our processing office for logistical or legal reasons. Officers therefore carry out interview trips to meet with our applicants. We may need to wait for a core number of interviews within a region prior to organizing a trip so as to have a critical number of scheduled interviews to ensure efficiency and maximize our resources.
Travel in this region can be complex, time-consuming, and unreliable. These are all factors that contribute to longer processing times for family class applications. At the same time, our interview trips have a facilitative aspect to them, as we know that some of our applicants may be in a vulnerable situation. They also may not have the capacity or support necessary for them to properly complete the forms. As a result, while we are assessing the genuineness of the relationship, we are also gathering the necessary information from the applicant directly, allowing us to assess their vulnerability, in case facilitative measures need to be taken, while at the same time ensuring all necessary—